Chief Inspector Andy Lemon thanked the postal workers for spotting the suspicious letter before it reached him, and described it as an attempt to hurt or kill multiple officers in his station. He said it wasn’t clear which specific IRA splinter group was behind the bomb.
British Army experts dismantled the device during a security operation that snarled traffic for several hours in Strabane, a predominantly Irish Catholic town that is a power base for several IRA factions in the British territory. Lemon is the town’s police commander and the most senior officer to be targeted with a bomb in two decades.